


in my skin

by watergator



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Gender, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 08:10:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17484401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watergator/pseuds/watergator
Summary: dan thinks about what it is that makes him a man





	in my skin

Warm water washes over the chill that had begun to set into his skin from the cool January air that had settled throughout the apartment within the night before. Dan stands under the spray of the shower and tips his head back, letting the heavy fall of water cascade down from his head where it drips from his hair and down his back, spreading the comforting warmth throughout his body.  
  
He read somewhere that it was always best to let hot water soften you before you took a razor to your skin when it comes to shaving. Something about hair follicles and letting them breathe and letting the skin go soft before cutting away at the hairs on the surface, and Dan doesn’t know if that’s an exact science, but he’ll indulge in it for a moment here in his shower.  
  
After a couple minutes once he’s soaked through and he feels like it’s been enough time to allow his body to relax he makes a grab for the brand new shaving foam he’d purchased and the little disposable razor he bought yesterday. He pulls the plastic little cover off the top and chucks it to the floor, careful to push it away with a toe so he won’t hurt himself on it later. He shakes the can of foam before stepping half way out the spray and squirting a satisfying amount into his palm where he lathers it up his long bare leg.  
  
He doesn’t usually shave his legs. Barely, even. But this is something he’s recently letting himself enjoy. He bends over and pulls the razor gently up from his ankle to his knee, enjoying the smooth glide and the strip of bare silky skin it leaves behind in its trail.   
  
He holds the razor under the water and watches the clumps of leg hair wash away from the blades and onto the floor were they wisp away down into the drain. He leans over again and repeats the slow action from ankle to knee, this time just an inch over from before. He smiles down at where he can see the bareness of his skin in contrast of where the rest of his leg is covered in thick, curled hair.  
  
He does the same, over and over, slowly and gently, being sure not to miss a single patch of hair that rests on his leg.  
  
There’s nothing sexual about it. This is simply something Dan allows himself to indulge in every now and then. He enjoys the feeling of soft skin under his touch, feeling the places that hair should usually grow, instead finding silky smooth skin there instead.   
  
He reaches around his leg to do the back, more careful this time, being sure to be careful not to accidently nick himself like he’d done a few times in the past.  
  
He enjoys shaving his legs, and he also enjoys having not shaving his legs. He likes the way hair grows on him so when he lays in bed with Phil and he feels his leg hair brush up against his, he’s reminded of how queer they are together; two men together, undeniably male, lying in bed together, body to body.   
  
But sometimes he lets himself enjoy the little things that maybe by societies standards don’t make him exactly ‘male’. He likes shaving his legs and sometimes if he’s feeling like it, he’ll remove the hair under his arms too, liking the way his deodorant stick glides over smooth skin once he’s removed it. He’ll shave every hair from the neck down on his body, not because he feels he’s obliged to, but because sometimes it’s a nice indulgence he lets himself be pleasure in.  
  
He likes the little feminine parts of himself. He likes ordering small orders of women’s perfumes and spraying them on his skin once they arrive for Phil to smell. He likes the feeling of polish on his nails in pretty colours other than just black. He likes going onto the women’s section of online stores and picking out pretty pink jumpers that’ll likely hang off his frame, but buys nonetheless. He likes woman’s hooped earrings that are a little larger than his Topman hoop. He likes browsing at makeup and watching tutorials on youtube, despite the fact that that’s something he’s yet to venture out into yet. He’ll find himself looking at dresses and skirts and imagining what they’d look like hugging his thighs and lets himself bask in that small happiness without having to commit to anything just yet.  
  
Of course, there’s nothing really feminine about shaving your legs, he thinks. It’s not exclusively a woman thing – but the nice silky way his legs feel afterwards so he can slip knee high socks and a nice pair of woman’s underwear over, makes him feel that tiny bit more feminine.   
  
He doesn’t think he’d ever want to change himself. He likes having the parts that are supposed to make him a man. He guides the razor to the top of his thigh before washing away the hair again before going back to his leg, going over the little soft patches he’s missed.  
  
He likes being male and having a boyfriend and being gay. He likes that Phil enjoys his broad shoulders and his faint Adam’s apple that he’ll suck on sometimes, and he knows Phil enjoys his bits, enjoys them as much as Dan enjoys them himself.  
  
But sometimes when taking away everything sexual, he wants to understand this part of him just a little more. He wants to slip into bed with panties and not have Phil oogle him or make any comments; to which Phil never has.  
  
He’s thought about pronouns and what he feels comfortable in, and he’s spoken to Phil about it too. He’d thought about how the way ‘they’ would feel on his tongue, and thought about how right now just ‘he’ and ‘him’ is what feels right. He’s not sure if it’s because that’s who he is, or maybe just out of familiarity. But he is sure that if he asked Phil to try out something else just to see how it tastes for them both, Phil wouldn’t hesitate to do that for him.  
  
Sometimes it is about sex; sometimes Dan likes wearing the underwear to get Phil riled up and it’s all part of a game, but they make it clear between them both – which days are for something sexual and which are just for Dan.  
  
Dan finishes on one leg and sticks it under the shower spray and watches the last bits of foam and hair wash away, leaving a bare leg. He smiles happily and runs his hand over feeling over for any bits missed.  
  
Not long ago, both he and Phil had taken a quiet little trip to Lush. He’d walked into the store and grinned giddily at Phil at the sights and smells, and Phil had smiled back. They’d spend maybe an hour browsing different kinds of bath bombs, all of different shapes, colours and smells; all advertising different benefits that Dan read over, weighing up his options.   
  
He hadn’t thought much of themselves in a bath bomb store until Dan had gasped and picked up a beautiful pink and purple bath bomb, pretty with a rose in the middle, he explained to Phil it was called ‘sex bomb’ and had shoved it under Phil’s nose to smell who had hummed in admiration. Just then, out the corner of Dan’s eye he spotted a man who was seemingly in the corner waiting for his young looking daughters to finish their own shopping, glance over at the two large, grown men buying their own flowery, sweet smelling bath bombs.   
  
Dan had looked him in the eyes and thrown the bath bomb into the basket with the rest of the little collection they’d accumulated within the last hour and followed Phil up to the cashier to pay, and once they’d left the shop, Dan had smiled to Phil, thinking about their plans for later where they could fill up their tub and enjoy their new purchase together.  
  
Once again, it wasn’t always about sex; sometimes they’d get fresh and clean together for sex, and other times it was an excuse to not have sex. Either way, Dan enjoyed the way Phil would sit in between his legs with his back flush to Dan’s chest and they could sit and enjoy the peacefulness that would settle around them in that moment. He could breathe in the sweet smells that were supposedly feminine, and think about the man in the store earlier that was perhaps perplexed at the idea of men wanting to enjoy a bath bomb to drop into their bath. A bath shared between them.  
  
Dan finishes up his second leg and rinses it off along with the razor. He picks up the cap off the floor and clicks it back over the head and places it back down again on the floor. He’s done for now, he decides, and instead gets to work on washing his hair and the rest of his body. He grabs for the fruity body wash they have shared, the body wash Phil had plucked off the shelf of a Poundland and almost moaned in response to smelling the contents. It smelt like berries and sweet things.   
  
Here in the shower it sits between a bottle of Lynx shower gel that has ‘For Men’ labelled across the side. Some days Dan likes using that shower gel, other days he enjoys this one. It doesn’t matter to him.  
  
He scrubs over his body and washes his hair, letting bubbles drip down his body, knowing comfortably that he’s in no rush. Phil probably still sits in the gaming room editing his new video he filmed days before, and Dan won’t be needed until Phil has his final draft done, waiting to show Dan who will love it no matter what.  
  
He steps out the shower once he’s washed away every bubble on his body and he feels fresher. His naked skin hits the cool air once the shower is turned off and he grabs for his biggest fluffiest towel and wraps himself up in it. As he pats himself dry, he thinks about what he’ll have to hunt through his room to wear. Maybe he’ll pull his panties up his legs and find one of his favourite pink jumpers he has; or maybe he’ll wear his Calvin Klein’s only and stride around the house with his bare chest until he feels cold again and Phil tells him to put some damn clothes on.  
  
But right now as Dan rubs down his freshly shaved legs with his towel, it doesn’t matter to him what underwear he wears under his clothes, or what he’ll spray into his skin to make him smell good, or whether he has hair on his legs or whether he shaves it away and moisturises it with a bottle of Nivea ‘for women’; what he knows is that when he takes that control for himself, even in the tiniest of ways, it makes him feel just a little more confident in who he is.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr !! @watergator


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